Ancestral Roofs

"In Praise of Older Buildings"

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

On Raglan Road on an Autumn Day...

Today I had a perfect fall wander through the wandering streets of the village once called Picardville, in the Raglan Road and Division Street area of Kingston. It is a delight of tiny streets bending and branching, cul-de-sacs and one-ways. Of fine old stone houses with parapet walls, newer infills, gentrified older homes, plain frame working class cottages, and a few old places that could have been here from the beginning - the core of the old village.

Picardville, according to Margaret Angus. Or French town? Residents Mary and Steve have heard it called that. Now its just one of the charming neighbourhoods of Kingston.

This is Skeleton Park. Now McBurney Park, it has some old stories to tell. Lots of tales await. Once the perfect weather ends and my camera and I come off the road.

Great Architecture quotes

"The sins of the Architect are permanent sins" Frank Lloyd Wright, 1914

"In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught." ~Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet (Posted in January on the ACO Acorn online)

"It is forbidden to disfigure external decorations on private buildings through modern additions and to spoil historic buildings in an important town out of avarice and the desire to make money." - Theodosius, Valentinianus, Arcadius (309 A.D.)

"It has been said that at its best, preservation engages the past in a conversation with the present over a mutual concern for the future" - William Murtagh (1988)

"Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact". - John Kenneth Galbraith (1979)

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines" - Frank Lloyd Wright

"Architecture is the art of how to waste space" - Philip Johnson

"Architecture is frozen music" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Photo Gallery

"Caught in passing"

Striker/Walmsley House 1868

Albert Street beauty

Fort William Collegiate Institute - "they don't make 'em like they used to"